


Pasting Gold in the Cracks of the World

by Letterblade



Series: A Ghost Enters the Land of Dragons [1]
Category: Sengoku Basara
Genre: Aftermath, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 22:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2168361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade/pseuds/Letterblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has killed the Demon King. Now the world has changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pasting Gold in the Cracks of the World

**Author's Note:**

> This happened because I was showing ravenshadow Katsuie's drama route, because it is beautiful, and we started talking about the immediate aftermath. And then both wrote about it. Yay.

They encamped in the far gardens of Honnoji, as the flames burnt out and the sun sank and the world became still and peaceful. Green, green trees on the borders of the scorched land, outside the fire contained by Date troops marshaled with practiced efficiency by the Dragon's Right Eye. Katsuie had staggered to his knees as they scattered out of the burning temple, worn to the bone. Stared up at the sky as clouds of smoke drifted across it. A sky that no longer held the Demon King. A sky that hung over a world changed to the roots, broken, by his own hands.

He had not thought this day could come. Lord Nobunaga, invincible; Lord Nobunaga, who could crush a man's body with a touch, his spirit with a glance, who had left him howling and broken upon the naked stone; this day was an impossible dream, and he did not realize his hand was shaking until he looked at it, gauntleted, held up to the sky as he lay on his back in the grass...

"Hey."

He had not realized Masamune had taken his hand. Worn lightning vanbrace, blurring in his vision as he struggled for air.

"Hey. Breathe. It's a big change, but you're still here, and so'm I."

"I..."

Katsuie managed to breathe as his eyes slid over to where Masamune sat beside him, towering, as he saw the slight rise and fall in Masamune's breastplate. In rhythm.

"I have come to live in a different world, and I do not know how."

Masamune cracked a smile, sharp, and squeezed his hand, almost enough pressure to feel like human touch through both their armor. "Yeah. You have. But, you know--you're living in this world because you reached out and made it, with your own hands."

"I. Shibata Katsuie."

"Sure thing."

His mind felt oddly blank, light. The glow of the setting sun seemed white as freedom, white as purity, things he did not understand. "How...do I live, in this new world?"

"One day at a time. It'll be weird as hell at first, but you'll get used to it."

"With you?"

"Long as you like." Another squeeze, and a tug. "Sit up and get your armor off, I'm checking you over." 

* * *

He wore strong armor, but the force of Lord Nobunaga's blows had stamped bruises into his pale skin. Burns of demonic claws. A bullet had cracked one of his vanbraces, driven the raw edge of the metal into his flesh. Masamune unhooked his own vanbraces with his teeth, stripped off his gloves, baring his hands. Katsuie held very still in his thin undershirt and trousers, watched the blood seeping down his sleeve, let him work. Slide up his shirt, salve the bruises on his back and belly, hands warm on his bare skin. Cleaning and bandaging the cut on his arm, practiced, methodical; it didn't hurt much.

The Oda physicians had never taken such care with him. Once, they had let a wound fester, untreated, until the pain became unbearable; still the scar of it bubbled on his calf. He was no use with a missing leg, Lord Mitsuhide had said, putting his foot down. Forcing them to treat him so that he could remain their tool in battle.

His new lord tended him with his own two hands, and did not let a single scratch go overlooked. A new world. So vividly clear, even as the sun set; so real that it stunned him.

"What were you when you weren't Katsuie?" Masamune asked, calm and quiet, as he patted soothing salve into his bruises, as if it was the most normal question he could possibly ask. Katsuie shivered under his hands, calmed as Masamune splayed his palm over the blade of one shoulder.

"I...I was..." His voice was low, his lips numb; he took a breath and kept going, because he no longer lived in a world where he was frozen. "The king of spirits."

Masamune made a contemplative noise as he gently slid his shirt back down. "Out of want or need?"

Katsuie stared into the distance, bewildered. Birds fluttered at dusk. So lost that he could barely think. "I. Do not know, Date-shi...no, Masamune..."

"Hn. No sweat, Katsuie. Sometimes you don't figure that sort of thing out for ages. Especially after something like this. Legs."

Katsuie blinked over his shoulder as Masamune nudged at him.

"Legs," Masamune said again. "Just lie the hell down."

* * *

He lay. Masamune tended the demon burns on his legs. The sky colored, clouded, darkened; the air cooled; and still, still, the world was clear as fresh water.

"When I am with you," he said, after a long, long silence, "there is clarity in this world."

Masamune grinned down at him, patted his knee. "Good. Then I won't leave you alone."

Katsuie fumbled a hand in the grass, suddenly unsure. "I would not wish to presume--"

"Hey, you're not presuming. My choice. I don't leave my men behind. Not ever. Kojuro taught me that." He paused, raised his free hand. "Oi, Kojuro! You get over here when you're done settling things down, you hear?"

Katsuie could not see him from where he lay. Only hear the reassuring strength in his voice. "Of course, Masamune-sama."

* * *

 

It was a long, slow realization that Masamune meant to spend the night with him.

Katsuie could not bring himself to protest. No, not even that; perhaps he wanted it. However strange and presumptive it was to think such a thing. Yet he reflexively denied the invitation into his tent. Not his place. The Oda provisioners had habitually furnished him with neither tent nor bedroll, an omission far too pervasive to be a mistake; he had learned to sleep in the dirt and the open air like a common soldier. Here, as the stars came out amongst clearing smoke, he had resigned himself to it without a thought.

Masamune just chuckled. "In the open air, huh?" A sharp smile. "I like it. Clear out all the demon stink from our heads. Kojuro, get something comfortable from the tent, we're sleeping rough."

"I..."

Kojuro's footsteps neared. Silent as he knelt, unrolled bedding, until finally he spoke, quietly.

"Katsuie, you are not required to indulge him if you do not wish to."

Katsuie fumbled for words, his chest clenching with some strange, warm sensation he could not name. "It...is all right, Katakura-shi."

"Good." Masamune nudged him. "Scoot over, there's enough bedroll for all of us."

"All of us...?"

"Masamune-sama," Kojuro said, almost not a question.

"Yeah." Masamune waved a hand over Katsuie as he scooted. Soft, clean cotton under his back, still with the smell of fresh grass beneath. Masamune sitting up, peeling off his coat, and Katsuie barely even heard Kojuro move. Easy, choreographed, taking his coat and laying it aside, reaching for the clasps of Masamune's breastplate. Practiced, reverent. The six claws laid above Katsuie's head, above where Masamune's own head would rest. Katsuie watched in wonder; he had never seen something like this before. Want, unwelcome, dangerous, stirred in his heart.

Masamune, stripped to white undershirt and fundoshi, rolled up beside him and caught his outstretched hand. Lay close, so close that Katsuie could rest his head on his shoulder, feel the warmth of his body and his breath.

"Da...Masamune..."

"It's okay. You don't like it, you get up."

Warmth behind him. Kojuro, stripped of armor, the solid bulk of him against Katsuie's back. The warmth of his coat, leather still smelling of him, draped across their legs. Katsuie could barely breathe--never, never lain this close to another, not in all his years...

He didn't get up.

* * *

 

The soldiers settled. The night grew to full dark. But sleep seemed far for all of them. Masamune languid, sprawled with one arm tucked under Katsuie's shoulders, the occasional murmur to Kojuro about the troops, the route back to Oshu on the morrow. Rolling onto his side to drape his other arm over Katsuie, absentmindedly petting his shoulder. Kojuro still, lying on his side like a wall, secure, warm. His arm settled on Katsuie's waist, as if bracing him, and slowly, slowly, Katsuie felt himself come to ease between them.

"Hey," Masamune murmured after a moment, patting Katsuie's shoulder. "You doing okay?"

He stirred, breathed, fumbled for words. What words even were there? His thoughts had gone far, far beyond them. Into some calm expanse of blank, oddly pleasant shock.

"The world has changed, and I do not know how..."

His voice felt small, breath hot against Masamune's chest. Masamune stirred, tightened his arm around him. "You know how. Don't let yourself forget, Katsuie."

"No...I meant...how does one man's end, when I had no love left for him, change so much?"

Masamune went very still for a moment. His voice low. "Because when somebody defined you, _made_ you and your world, getting them out of the picture changes everything. Whether or not you cared for them, whether or not it's ultimately for the best, everything shatters and you're left to build up something new. Something like that, yeah?"

Katsuie felt his eyes widen. Stared at him. Truth, truth today struck him like blows. Kojuro stirred behind him, almost imperceptibly, a thrum of alertness through the solid warmth of his body.

"...yes." Struggled for breath for a moment, taking the blow. "But...how do you know?"

"'Cause this eye was as lifeless as yours once." Almost light, almost flippant, but framed between their bodies, he could feel it--both a hair more tense than they'd been when they laid down. Shadows of a past he did not know, that it was not his place to ask after. Instead, slowly, slowly, Katsuie reached out and rested his fingertips on the leather thong snug against Masamune's face; and Masamune stiffened, his breath catching in his throat, his eye narrowing.

"Masamune-sama," Kojuro murmured, low and solid. His hand moved, silent, from Katsuie's hip to his lord's, fencing Katsuie in, and he could hardly even care.

Masamune let out a long, long breath. Slowly. Another. And then laughed very softly.

"I've struck men for that, Katsuie."

Katsuie caught his breath, pulled his hand back, folded it awkwardly against his chest. "Then...why not?" he dared ask after a long moment.

"'Cause I saw your raw spots today."

Katsuie blinked at him. Felt something like shame claw at him, turned his face to the ground. "I...I do not understand."

Masamune grabbed his wrist and dropped Katsuie's hand back on his face, on his blind side. "Means it's not fair to get pissy at you for peeking at mine. Right, Kojuro?"

"Trust is a choice," Kojuro said quietly. "And a thing that is given."

"Yeah. Well. I've asked a lot of it from you today."

"The ways of the Date Clan are strange," Katsuie managed.

"You ask me, I'd say the ways of the Oda Clan are the strange ones," Masamune said, with a bit of a smile.

"I do not..." Katsuie fought for a breath, disoriented. "I do not understand this choice, or what it is that I must give."

"You'll learn. It's cool."

"Masamune-sama," Kojuro murmured. "I understand, but you need not push yourself in this."

"Hn." Masamune frowned, no heat in it, prodded Kojuro's hand on his hip.

"Allow yourself to come to an understanding of trust, Katsuie," Kojuro said quietly. "For this new world you have found yourself in may be built upon it, and such a world would be well-made. But for now, you may rest. You have done great things today."

Katsuie felt his chest clench, something hot prick at his eyes. Dragged his hand off Masamune's face to clutch at his shirt. Such kindness--such kindness--one more word would break him, swift and sure as the sky changing as Lord Nobunaga breathed his last--

"It's okay. We got you."

He did not even understand the dragon tongue. Not this time, not with his mind already reeling from this day that felt like a year. But no, even just the warmth in his voice--

They tightened their arms around him, strong and secure, and between them, he shuddered, cracked, spilled himself in silence and in tears that choked his throat like a vise.

They were still there when the fit passed, when he gulped deep and shaking breaths and felt something ease open in his chest, when color seeped into his world.

They were still there when he slept. When he woke. When Kojuro led up a fine Oshu mare with her white mane freshly groomed, and Masamune looked back at him with a crooked grin and said to come home.

The reins were bright red in his hands, and the dawn sky blue, and the world soft as a newborn babe.


End file.
